


The Game

by rillalicious



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-28
Updated: 2016-11-28
Packaged: 2018-09-02 18:43:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8679076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rillalicious/pseuds/rillalicious
Summary: Harry and Draco engage in a yearly competition to each retrieve an item that the other has specified. Every New Year's Eve they meet in a Gringotts vault to share their success. This year, Draco is running late.





	

The tavern was poorly lit. This in itself was not a surprise to Draco. These places frequently were. It was, however, an annoyance. The description of the man he'd been sent to find was murky at best, and when the profile of every ne'er-do-well hunched over the bar was cloaked in shadows, it was as if he had no information to go on at all. He had a sinking feeling that this year Potter had sent him off to find the likes of Mundungus Fletcher or some similar petty thief. 

With his hood pulled loosely over his head, shadowing his face, he started down the narrow path between the bar and pub tables, softly whispering the code word until someone turned around. 

*~*~*

Harry reached the vault first. He always did. Malfoy would saunter in two minutes past twelve. 

He always did. 

Harry checked his watch. He had some time to kill. He set the small wooden box down on a table in the center of the vault and sat at the chair beside it. He'd brought the chair himself, five years ago, when it had become clear that he'd be arriving long before Malfoy every time. That was two years into the game. And now here he was. 

He would sit, and he would wait. 

He reached into his pocket and pulled out the small envelope containing Malfoy's assignment for next year's meeting. His fingers trembled in just the slightest as he set it on the table in front of him, smoothing the paper over the rough grain of the wood. 

Next year's assignment would be the riskiest yet, and not because of a heist. And for the first time since they'd started this game, started challenging each other to bring back items rarer and harder to find than the last, Harry felt a wave of apprehension. It wasn't due to Malfoy's potential reaction. 

It was for his own guarded heart.

~*~*~

"This way," the old man rasped, his words barely audible over the squealing of muggle tires on the wet pavement outside. 

Draco cursed Potter's name under his breath as they wound up the narrow staircase to the bell tower. Of course he'd been sent to an overcrowded _muggle_ neighborhood on an inclement evening in the company of the most grotesquely incompetent petty thief he'd ever met. Because Potter was nothing if not persistent in his ability to make Draco miserable. 

"Here," the old man said, and he grunted, pushing open a heavy wooden door. 

Potter had outdone himself.

~*~*~

Malfoy's usual two minute arrival window of fashionable lateness had come and gone nearly an hour ago, and there was still no sign of him in the vault. Harry tilted his chair back on two legs and let it drop to the floor with a thud. He might have been worried if he hadn't designed Malfoy's task to involve more surprise twists and turns than ever before. 

It had been seven years since they'd stumbled upon this strange game by way of a joking dare that neither of them had been willing to concede. 

"If you want to prove that you're not all talk, Potter," Draco had said, his voice a low and certain drawl, "then I have a proposition." 

The rules of the game were simple, each year they would present one another with an object to procure, using any means necessary, and by midnight on the mark of the new year, they would meet in an old Malfoy vault at Gringotts to verify what they'd done. 

The first year, Harry had arrived to an empty vault, wand drawn, and had been quite certain that it was an ambush of some sort. Malfoy sauntered in at two minutes past midnight, looking smug and self-righteous as he gazed down Harry's wand. And in an instant, Harry had known the purpose of this whole endeavor. It was _fun_ for Malfoy, this battle of wits, and some little, slightly embarrassed part of him had realized that he was flattered that Malfoy found him a worthy adversary in this regard. 

He lifted the lid of the wooden box on the table in front of him, just enough so that the thing inside could not leap out, and closed it again at the flash of green. 

Harry closed his eyes. Each year the object of his task seemed to grow less prosaic and more intimate, almost as if he were climbing a ladder, and year by year, clue by clue, drawing closer to Malfoy. This year's object--if 'object' were even the world for it--made Harry feel as though he'd leapt over several rungs, and Malfoy was now at arm's reach. 

He checked his watch again. It was half past one. 

"Happy New Year," Harry murmured to himself. He glanced anxiously at the vault door. 

There was nothing for it but to keep waiting. 

~*~*~

Draco held the pulsing bag in the palm of his hand. Where he had given Harry the cold comfort of a piece of his own tragic history, Harry had sent him on a journey for something quite opposite that. What Draco held was the embodiment of warmth and… acceptance. It was a thing he had never felt before, and one he was certain Harry hadn't felt for many of his early years. 

It was a piece of _Harry_ so significant that Draco could no longer think of him simply as Potter. They were on a first name basis now, seven years into this enterprise, and Draco found that fact irrevocable. He pulled a silver pocket watch from his wool coat and checked the time. He was late, later than he'd ever been before. He hoped-- _hoped_ , which was a word he wouldn't have dared apply to this game before--that Harry had not left. 

Something about the warm heartbeat radiating against his own pulse in his palm had him certain Harry would still be waiting.

~*~*~

When the door opened, after a few more minutes and a thousand years all at once, Harry banged his knees on the underside of the table as he leapt to his feet.  
"Missed me, I see" Draco said, though the bite he tried to inject into his voice rang hollow.

Harry cursed, and bent down to rub his knees, then looked up at Draco. 

"I was nearly asleep," he said. "Could you have been any later?" 

Draco shrugged and walked over to the table, standing opposite Harry and gazing down at the wooden box. 

"I could have been," he said. "Chose not to be." 

Harry snorted and shook his head, looking Draco over. Did he have it? Had Harry actually made the clues too difficult this time? 

"Oh, come off it, Ha--Potter," said Draco. "I see the completely unsubtle way you're sizing me up. Do you honestly think I would have shown up without it?" He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a small, glowing pouch that Harry could hear pulsing from across the table. 

"Oh," Harry said. "Good. I thought maybe it had been--"

"It _was_ a challenge," said Draco. "I won't say that it wasn't. But I have it." He started to lower the bag to the table, but at the last moment, his fingers closed around it, and he pulled it up close against his body at the middle of his chest. 

Harry felt his chest rise sharply. "I, uh… Got yours too," he said, and unceremoniously, he flipped open the lid of the wooden box. " _Animans Memoriae_ , the living memory. It's your… your father." 

The tiny, transparent forms inside the box stood wand to wand, neither flinching, till suddenly a flash of green light burst forth from one, and the other melted to a pile of robes at the bottom of the box. Harry felt it shake him physically. 

Draco swallowed, eyes fixed on the box, the bag in his hand trembling as he held it to him. 

"Are you… Are you alright?" Harry asked. 

Draco raised his eyes then, and Harry swore he could feel both their hearts beating in time with the bag. 

"Yes," Draco said, and Harry watched the rise of his throat as he swallowed. "Yes, quite."

Emboldened, Harry walked around the table, placing one hand over Draco's, over the bag. 

"It's… It's memories," he said. "Just like yours." 

"I know," said Draco. "I knew what it was I was looking at." 

"Good ones," said Harry. "The kind that can sustain a wizard. For a long time. They're not mine. Not all of them, anyway. I've… collected them. In my work… Sometimes… When someone is about to die, they want to share things… I ask… I sometimes ask them to share the good things. I thought you… that you might like to hold them." 

"Why?" 

"Last year," said Harry. "When you told me you didn't understand why I do what I do, why it's so important to me to always stand up for justice. You told me I could probably do anything else in the world, so why did I want to be an Auror? This. This is why." 

Draco spread his fingers then, and Harry interlaced his own, reaching with his free hand to take the bag and set it on the table, beside the memory that Draco had shared. 

"I never thanked you properly," said Draco, "for finding his killer." 

"You did," said Harry. "By starting this game."

"It's not a game anymore, is it?" 

"No. I don't think it is."

"Good. I was growing bored." One charming corner of Draco's mouth turned up. "And the dampness down here in this vault is murder on my hair, even if it is only once a year." 

"And we wouldn't want anything to come between you and your vanity," said Harry, as Draco's fingers tightened around his. 

"Exactly."

"So, where does this go from here?" asked Harry. 

Draco smiled, a thin, wily smile, and he turned and walked away from the table, his fingers still tangled with Harry's. Harry followed with a few staggering steps. Draco pushed open the heavy vault door.

"You tell me," he said, pulling Harry from the room. "We have the whole world out there ahead of us." 

{END}


End file.
